A John McCarthy story

They say that famous deaths come in threes. That’s no doubt just an artifact of our strange sense of coincidence, but after Jobs and Ritchie, tonight we learn of the death of John McCarthy, AI pioneer and creator of LISP.

My first personal encounter with John was part of a big story of my life, the banning of rec.humor.funny. In a short summary of what’s told there, RHF had been banned at Waterloo and later, due to a comedy of errors got banned at Stanford. Shortly after the ban John called me up and said he wanted to be a champion against the ban. He had been worried for some time about the growing tide of speech codes at supposed bastions of academic freedom, and the idea of banning publications on the internet was a new level. John used his sway to get some press, organize a protest march and have the matter fixed by the academic senate. Strangely, just a few days ago I was at a dinner for a group called FIRE which fights against crazy academic bans, and I was recounting the story of what John did at Stanford for the first time in many years.

Later, I moved to silicon valley and got to know John in person a bit more. He was an incredible force of character long after the age where most have shrunk away. If the AIs of the future are able to resurrect the figures of the past, you know he’ll be one of the first in line for them.

RIP John. And Dennis (who I praised over on Google+). And Steve Jobs. Let’s really limit it to three for a while.